1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera being capable of winding and rewinding a film by a revolution of a motor, and having a silent film feed mode for reducing film feed noise in response to the surrounding noise level.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a camera having an automatic film feed mechanism by a motor, it has been well known that winding and rewinding of a loaded film (film feeding) should be done as fast as possible in order to prepare the following shot or to load the following roll of film when winding the film before taking a photo or rewinding the film after taking a photo.
Due to this, a small and powerful DC motor has been mounted in the camera to improve a film feeding speed.
However, in accordance with the higher film feeding speed, the noise level generated in feeding the film becomes much higher than the conventional case, and there occur troubles at a place where silence is required or time when silence is required. There is a case that such noise is produced by the fact that noise, which is generated when the feed mechanism is operated at a high speed, is added to noise, which is generated from the motor.
In order to solve such troubles, for example, Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. 2-191925 discloses a camera having a change-over mode for changing the rewinding speed to change the mode in response to the state of the surroundings, thereby making it possible to select either a silent mode in which generating noise is reduced by decreasing a rewinding speed thereby rewinding the film or a high speed mode in which the film is rewound with a high noise level.
However, in the above publication, since a photographer manually operates a changing switch, there will occur a case in which noise is erroneously given off if the photographer forgets to change the mode. Also, generally, when the rewind of the film is started, such an operation cannot be temporarily stopped and the mode cannot be changed so as to change the film winding speed until the rewind of the film is finished. Due to this, in the case of the erroneous operation, there is a case in which the film is rewound in the silent mode even when the photographer may rewind the film in the normal mode.
Moreover, if a photographer cannot judge the mode selection with regard to the surrounding noise level, and winds or rewinds the film beyond necessity in the silent mode in which the feeding speed is low, rewinding time is made longer or a chance for releasing the shutter may be lost.